The farm-to-school movement has been gaining ground lately as advocates encourage administrators to bring more local food into school cafeterias. But at Olney Friends School in Barnesville, Ohio, eating locally goes beyond farm-to-school: for this small college-prep boarding school, it’s...

Farmers markets are far more than a source of good food from small farmers and a place to build connections among the community. They can also serve as incubators for food businesses, places where new entrepreneurs can try selling prepared foods on a small scale or where experienced market participants can...

In every school, there is a legendary former student — the one whose academic prowess knew no bounds. “Brilliant,” people marvel about this student, even decades later. “That kid was brilliant.” (Or, here in New England, you might hear: “Wicked smaaaaaht.”) At my...

Last week, I vowed to escape my farmers market rut and cook outside my comfort zone in honor of National Farmers Market Week Aug 1-7. Farmers markets are spreading like (edible) weeds around the country. There were 5,279 as of 2009 by the USDA’s count, up 13 percent from the previous year. The new...

Before Local Roots Market opened late last year, we expected gaps in the products offered. One specific category of products –- cheese –- kept us from limiting our definition of “local” to “within 100 miles” as we weren’t sure how many cheesemakers we would find in the area....

Ever since taking a cartography class in graduate school, I’ve had a penchant for maps. Full of information, they elegantly highlight places and ideas that we may have missed otherwise. As a visual person, I can appreciate the splashes of color and clean designs. But not all maps are visual. We can...

By Renee Ciulla As I wrote in my first post for Ethicurean, I’m a graduate student learning about Sustainable Agriculture in Europe who recently spent a semester at the University of Kassel in Germany. Its international organic agriculture program is located in the quaint village of Witzenhausen, surrounded...

As the weather turns colder here in northeast Ohio, harvests are tapering off and farmers markets are dwindling, both on the farmer side and the shopper side. We’re approaching that time of year when the only local produce you can expect to find for months consists of potatoes, onions, cabbage, and...

I went to a Slow Food USA “Eat In” at the foot of San Francisco’s magnificent City Hall on Monday, one of several hundred events across the country that aims to build a movement around the upcoming reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act. The Act covers many parts of government food...

Though I’ve been gardening for many years, every season I come up against all the things I don’t know and want to learn. Usually I grab a book or talk to a friendly farmer at the local farmers market to see how someone else does what I want to do. But recently, I discovered a list of workshops...

Here in northeastern Ohio, not only are we surrounded by acres of rich agricultural land, on which depend a mixture of big and small farms, but in every county there are hidden pockets of little-known historical significance. And in almost-neighboring Richland County, one historical attraction has appeal to...

I’ve just come back from the WK Kellogg Foundation’s invitation-only Food and Society conference in San Jose, CA, where I was hanging out on the foundation’s dime with about 500 other assorted people working to change the food system — from grassroots activists to nutritionists,...